Response to CFMEU claims was too slow, Premier admits

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has conceded the response to violence allegations against the CFMEU raised directly with her was too slow.

Allan was sent a letter while transport infrastructure minister in April 2022 by an Indigenous labour-hire firm, claiming the union’s officials were threatening violence and blackballing non-preferred firms from state and federally funded projects, Nine newspapers report.

The letter was also sent to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese six months later.

Allan, now Victorian Premier, held the infrastructure portfolio from 2018 to 2023. She said her office logged the letter in October 2022, prompting an investigation by the major transport infrastructure authority.

“It’s clear that the correspondence was not processed quickly enough,” she said on Tuesday.

“But when it was formally lodged … with both my office and the major transport infrastructure authority, it was acted upon.”

In a letter to Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton in May 2023, Allan said she was advised the authority’s director-general Kevin Devlin had uncovered no evidence of “systemic, widespread, or organised criminal activity” on its worksites.

Victoria Police also assessed the allegations and took no action after deeming they did not meet the threshold of criminality, Patton has confirmed.

Allan has asked the ALP national executive to suspend the CFMEU’s construction arm from the Victorian Labor Party following allegations bikies and organised crime figures had infiltrated the union.

She also wrote to Victorian Labor’s state secretary to request the party immediately stop accepting donations from the union’s construction division.

Patton received a referral from Allan on Sunday and confirmed Victoria Police’s crime command was assessing it to determine whether the allegations met the criminal threshold.

“There’s obviously some really inappropriate, thuggish behaviour,” he told ABC Radio Melbourne on Tuesday.

“There’s potential threats, there’s influence potential in contracts. Whether it meets the criminal threshold, though, is a different matter.”

He warned it could take “a month or two” to sift through all the material before police ruled one way or another and said the force would also liaise with Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission.

“We’ll work through that but it’s not being brushed under the carpet, I can assure you that,” he said.

Patton denied Victoria Police had turned a blind eye to misconduct within the CFMEU, given the allegations came to light through a months-long investigation by Nine newspapers.

“Victoria Police can only act on matters referred to us,” he said.

“We don’t go actively trawling through union business or conduct procurements or anything unless it’s reported to us.

“So no, we haven’t failed at all.”

– AAP